Ah, a topic close to my heart! Costco has Lagavulin 16 on sale, or at least they did last week... Bottle's still half
full! Hard to be pesimistic with a well aged, Islay single malt so close at hand.
If'n you've never tried an Islay single malt you may want to start with a Laphroaig 10yo with a splash of distilled water.
Laphroaig is a hit or miss. I love me some good peat, but it's definitely not for everyone. It took me a while to get into too, and I just sucked it up and kept trying a dram every few days for weeks before I could really taste and smell anything other than ashtray.
That's what got me really hooked on whisky though. I was curious to see if there was really something to all the flamboyant and over the top tasting notes that you see everywhere and bought 10 bottles of different scotches to figure out if the deal is real. It is. Who would've guessed that you have to actually buckle down to "learn" tasting.
Similar story here, I was 90% through the first bottle of scotch I ever bought, Laphroag 10, before I truly started to see what it was trying to tell me through gustatory bliss.
I don't drink much either, and I'll plead the 5th on the rest (old habits die hard.) But when I do drink, I like me some old, stinky, Islay whiskey. Or bourbon, the old stand-by is Maker's Mark. That shit is pretty good.
